


like bright songbirds in the morning gloom

by philthestone



Series: pocket full of sand 'verse [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Miscarriage, and i find this, anyway im going back and digging up trash family stuff, but like it's very briefly mentioned, just as a warning bc I know it's something some people like to avoid, not at all in detail, this is all vieve's fault btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5600089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yes <em>Mom</em>.”</p><p>She starts to laugh but feels it stop halfway, her eyebrows creasing. He has already turned to go and she realizes that it can’t have been intentional, cannot possibly have been on purpose – not like <em>that</em>. It’s an expression, a sarcastic quip, but she watches as he turns around to give her one last reassuring grin and accidentally knocks his elbow into the doorway (the <em>ping</em> is immediately audible, this time) and swallows, smiling back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like bright songbirds in the morning gloom

**Author's Note:**

> so many many moons ago, vieve (@hansolosbutt on tumblr, go follow her nerd self she's rad) and I came up with the idea that maybe in trash family au padme and anakin almost have another child but
> 
> due to their occupation as Wanted Criminals and the fact that sometimes things go wrong and they can't exactly just stroll into a medicenter, they lose the baby
> 
> (and then I wrote this, because it's also important to establish (as if i haven't already) that padme and anakin basically pseudo-adopt han in trash fam au)
> 
> Something to note: takes place a little bit after "light a roman candle".
> 
> reviews are nobody dying or turning to the dark side and letting this stupid family live in the blessed peace and happiness most of them deserve

She’s in the kitchenette when he slips through the door. Her fingers are wound around a half-finished cup of caf and she feels better, physically, than she has in the last week. Her hands are cold.

All of her is cold. She cannot feel anything but.

She looks up, though, at the sound of the door whooshing open, and gives him a small smile.

Han lingers in the doorway, uncharacteristically hesitant, and taps the fingers of his right hand against the entrance to the family’s quarters. They don’t make any sound – or maybe she’s just that numb, that she can’t hear the faint pinging of the aluminium doorway against his long fingers, uneven and nervous.

“Hi.”

She feels her smile widen despite herself. “Hello, Han. Come in and sit down.”

He slips down into a chair facing her at the three-legged table and keeps his hands in his lap, his fingers fidgeting. “Me and Chewie just got back from our run.”

“I thought so. It went smoothly, right? No bumps?”

He shrugs, running a hand through his hair, his small grin turning a little crooked. “We got all our supplies alright, I guess. Enough ration bars and caf to last us the next five billion years. And some fresh stuff, too. I talked to the General on my way in. He said him and Tano are gonna try and contact some person called Hera Syndulla, try to make connections.”

She nods, and watches him shift slightly in his chair, wondering about his insistence on calling Anakin “General Skywalker” and the fact that he stubbornly refuses to dignify Ahsoka with anything but her last name.

(To be fair, Ahsoka’s just as bad. If she weren’t so tired – so very, very _tired_ – Padme would wonder if the young Togruta isn’t taking out all those years _she_ was teased by Anakin on the most convenient target she can find.)

She watches as Han lets his eyes wander around the kitchenette, glancing over the storage containers in the corner and the cooling unit at the side, eyes lingering on the cracks in the wall. He’s not been directly in their quarters for a while, instead gamely distracting the twins someplace outside, where they didn’t have to deal with the loss of something they couldn’t even begin to understand.

( _No_ , she thinks angrily. No, she should not, _cannot_ think like that, it’s unfair, it’s untrue, and they weren’t _distracted_ just –)

She takes a deep breath and focuses back on Han, thinking back to the first time she met him, dirty and underfed and picking her pocket, the lingering hope in his eyes contrasting the hardened set of his nine-year-old jaw.

Her hand automatically drifts to her midriff and she inhales sharply, the hollow feeling returning to her chest so suddenly that she cannot breathe.

He was small and dirty and all she could think about were the two babies she was carrying and _what if one day that was them –_

Han’s eyes, sharp and clever as they are green, catch her movement and his eyebrows furrow. He places his hands on his thighs and leans in and Padme feels a little bit of feeling return to her fingers when he gives her a concerned look, eyes soft, and asks quietly,

“Are you okay?”

She almost reaches across the table to touch his arm but stops herself. Her back straightens of its own accord. “I’m fine. As well as can be expected.”

He nods, hesitant once more. It’s disconcerting and sweet at the same time; not entirely off-putting, but out of character enough for him, usually so blunt and forward, to be so careful. Padme gives herself an internal shake. It’s _silly_ , she thinks. He’s being _silly_. She’s going to be _fine. It’s fine, it’ll all be fine there’s always another chance –_

 _(Anotherchanceanotherchanceanotherchance,_ it screams in her mind like an unwanted siren and there’s Anakin’s smiling face cupping her cheeks, _“Padme, we have another chance, to raise a family properly this time isn’t this wonderful –”_ and she has to bite down on her lip so hard she almost bleeds.)

(Like the blood staining the sheets that night and she was so _scared_ and her voice couldn’t hold it’d just _cracked_ when she felt her fingers grab Anakin’s shoulder, hidden under the blankets beside her as she stared in horror at the red, red blood staining the spot between her legs –)

“I brought you somethin’,” Han says abruptly, shoving his hand into his pocket and depositing a small package, wrapped in synthfoil, onto the scratched surface of the table. “It’s tea,” he adds, his hand dropping back into his lap. Padme looks up at him in surprise and opens her mouth, but he continues. “You’d said you liked it, before – anyway, I, um, thought you’d. Anyway. Found it in the market when we went to pick up the supplies.”

She offers him a tired smile and picks up the package, pulling the wrapping aside and feeling her eyes widen at the dark green leaves. It’s tea, her favorite tea, the one from Naboo that she’d drink on evenings when she was particularly lonely and Sabe would tease her all the time for liking it so much, for being so dependent on its comforting, earthy, honeyed smell.

“How –” She stops herself, feeling her lips tug reluctantly into a smile. _Luke. Of course._ And then she frowns. “This is – how did you even find this?”

He opens his mouth and closes it and suddenly she’s watching him become fascinated with the patterns gouged into the rough wood of their table and shuffling nervously in his seat. “Well I –” He makes a face and glares at her. “I dunno, I just thought it’d – cause Luke’d mentioned you liked it, so I – I thought maybe I’d look _around_ and it was _there_ and –”

Padme feels her mouth drop open.

“Han Solo, did you _steal_ a package of tea for me?”

 _“No!”_ Han lifts his hands up and knocks one into the table standing up indignantly (but checks himself immediately, too, steadies himself against the chair the moment she half-starts at his sudden movement, which is _stupid_ because she’s being _stupid_ and it’s not as if she’s suddenly – suddenly _fragile_ , or anything, damn it) and she’s suddenly got this urge to laugh because he’s so impossibly young to her ( _as if you weren’t once that young_ ) and so determined to do the right thing but so unwilling to admit to it. “I mean, _no_ I – it was – maybe,” he’s saying, eyes wide and expression pained and he runs a hand through his unruly hair, so desperate to gain her approval (and _all the gods of her childhood,_ she once governed a planet but she does not feel worthy of being this boy’s moral compass), “maybe a little bit. But it wasn’t that bad, I swear! I didn’t pay for the whole thing, it was just – it’s – I mean it’s not like the guy _saw_ me I –” He pauses mid-gesticulation and stares at her. “Why’re you laughin’?”

And she is – she is laughing and she _cannot stop laughing_ , her hand lifting shakingtrembling to press against her mouth and her shoulders leaning against the back of her chair and there are tears forming in her eyes because she is laughing so hard.

“Well that’s just –” Han scowls, swinging his arms and trying not to look confused. “Look, Comm – Padme. I’m just gonna – you’ve been under a lotta stress, so maybe I’ll just take the tea and –”

“No!” she manages. “ _No,_ oh my Force, no, I’m so sorry –” (And she’s wiping at her eyes and maybe the tears are no longer just from laughing but he’s not going to say anything so she won’t, either.) “Oh, Han, sit _down_.”

His shoulders slump but he remains standing, looking at the tea with a pained expression on his face. Padme reaches out on impulse and grabs his hand, and he starts, slightly, and only offers her a sheepish grin when she looks pointedly at the chair.

“Sit.”

He slips back in his seat.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Oh, for Force’s sake –” But he’s grinning, that blasted twinkling grin where his mouth goes crooked and his eyes tease you (and somewhere in the back of her mind, behind the ebbing haze of _cold_ and _numb_ , she wonders if there are any nice girls his age on location and if she’s going to have to recruit Anakin to do a reconnaissance mission because she doesn’t know what sorts wander around this area and she realizes, suddenly, that for some absurd yet totally natural reason she needs to silently give a seal of approval). He squeezes her hand, still holding his.

“You _do_ outrank me, Commander Skywalker.”

“Temporarily,” she retorts, tapping the synthfoil package and realizing that this time, she can hear the faint crinkling where her finger hits the wrapping. “Who knows, maybe we’ll move base and I’ll be obsolete.”

Han’s eyes soften. “You’re too amazing to be obsolete,” he says, and it’s only half-teasing.

“You’re sweet,” she tells him, laughing, but feels the sound catch in her throat.

(How many days had she lain in bed, wondering at her own failure? _Myfaultmyfaultmyfault_ , and yet _not_ at the same time, not at all controllable and _that was the most damn infuriating part –)_

“Hey,” says Han. He squeezes her hand again in his, and they’re warm and big and hers feel a tiny little bit less numb but she takes a shuddering breath and shakes her head.

“I’m okay,” she whispers. “I promise.”

( _“You’re going to be okay,”_ Anakin had said, like a _prayer_ , almost, hovering over her, and she could see the terror in his eyes through the haze of pain and panic, the thought of _what if we smuggled her to the medicenter too late_ and _what were we thinking, bringing another baby into a world like this,_ and –

 _Oh, gods,_ she thinks, remembers, her throat raw without having spoken or shed any tears; oh, _gods, we were going to name her Shmi._ )

He nods, and gets up again and without saying anything leans over and presses a kiss to her forehead, turning to leave. He’s barely twenty, she thinks, and has already been hurt so much, so often, so many things that he never talks about and sometimes Anakin will set his jaw and shake his head and be a little softer on Han for the rest of the afternoon but Padme can never quite figure it out – and he does not need the extra burden of her own pain and yet willingly offers a shoulder to lean on regardless.

“Han,” she says, quietly, getting up as he reaches the door. Their small kitchenette feels suddenly cold again, and her shoulders are trembling. “Thank you so much for the tea.”

And then her throat and closed up and she’s pressing her shakingtrembling hands to her mouth once more and suddenly she’s being hugged, so very, very tightly.

She wonders if he’s learned how to give hugs from wookiees, or if it’s just because he’s so much taller than her (just like Anakin is, and she needs to go to him, needs to hug him like this, needs to remember that he is hurting too) and hugs him back, unable to stop the stinging tears.

“I’m sorry,” she tries to whisper but she doesn’t quite know what ends up coming out and feels him press his hands more firmly against her back.

She can’t begin to wonder how long they stand there; he lets her go, his hands on her shoulders, and grins again, small and gentle.

She takes a shaky breath and nods, barely even registering that she’s doing so, watching as he nods back and lets his smile widen. His eyebrows are creased not with sympathy or pity but with an odd sort of kindness that she cannot place, and she pats him on the cheek gently before telling him off.

“No more stealing teas, though. Even for me.”

He sighs, grimacing. “Aren’t we _all_ technically wanted criminals.”

She purses her lips, trying to regulate her shaky breathing.

(He’s hugged her so hard, some of the feeling has returned to her shoulders.)

“Maybe. It’s the principle of the thing.”

A sigh. “No promises.”

“Han.”

“I never said I’d actually _do_ it again, I just like to keep my options open –”

_“Han.”_

(The sigh is more of a half-hearted groan this time.)

“Yes _Mom.”_

She starts to laugh but feels it stop halfway, her eyebrows creasing. He has already turned to go and she realizes that it can’t have been intentional, cannot possibly have been on purpose – not like _that._ It’s an expression, a sarcastic quip, but she watches as he turns around to give her one last reassuring grin and accidentally knocks his elbow into the doorway (the _ping_ is immediately audible, this time) and swallows, smiling back.

She sits, and fiddles with the tea package. The leaves inside are more green than brown _(brown, the colour of dried blood)_. Darker than Han Solo’s laughing eyes, which have made her smile almost as much as her own children’s have.

( _“We can raise a family properly, with a whole bunch of kids and we’ll love all of them so much –”_ )

She scoops the tea into two chipped mugs and tucks them in her arm, slipping out of the kitchen. When she finds Anakin, his eyes are almost as tired and puffy as hers, and she asks him if he’d help her boil the water.

And when she hugs him, it is for a very, very long time.


End file.
